1700

Gottfried Leibniz: Monadology or Lehrsätze über die Monadologie, 1714

Author: Gottfried Leibniz

Published: 1714 (French), 1720 (German)

Reasons to read: the first (that we know of) and grandest attempt to conceive of the world as as a system, in particular as a system of "reflections" in which the state of every element recursively mirrors the state of the whole

Reasons to read: "The first step is to state a hypothesis. To state a hypothesis, one must start with a theory to be invalidated", shows: you can never prove a theory correct; you can only invalidate it

Reasons to read: "groupthink" anti pattern, role of controversy and disagreement in the progress of science, professionalization has lead to selecting for “master craftsmen” to the almost complete exclusion of “seers.”